I just noticed that the lifts in the Waterfront building have mirror-blank ceilings. Not glass, though, because the reflections are slightly distorted.

The embroidery course isn’t until Tuesday, but the deadline for sending in photos of our work for discussion in Tuesday’s session is tomorrow afternoon, so I’ve been working hard.

The design inspiration:

And the first, A5-sized version:

And then the same thing scaled-down to A6:

I didn’t want the downscaling to be just a straight-up copy, because where is the fun in that, so I stitched the black areas instead of using appliqué. I kind of like it because the surfaces now have both structure as well as a flow and a direction. But I also don’t like it because the speckled look does not have the same impact at all as the unbroken black.

Also I just eyeballed the scaling-down and clearly didn’t get the proportions quite right. Should clearly have used a grid. The white blank space in the middle came out too large and takes over. I’m going to broaden the black curved areas around it, to balance it out – as soon as I buy more black embroidery floss, because all this surface-filling took a lot of yarn.

It’ll be interesting to hear what the teacher and the group will have to say about this.

It’s time for Nysse’s annual vaccinations. He was not happy about being in the transport cage. Other cats at the clinic were just quietly sitting in theirs, while Nysse was yowling and trying to claw and bite his way though the bars.

Adrian, opening the giant Lego set he got for his birthday – the tower of Barad-dûr. Forty bags holding a total of 5471 pieces.

I have lost all trust in tretton37 management and given up on the company. Which is sad, but it’s also such a huge relief to step away from the drama and be able to observe it from the sidelines without feeling that it really affects me. Not my problem any more.

So now I’m job-hunting. Having lunch with one consultancy and afternoon fika with another, trying to find one that I feel fits me.

At its best, tretton37 was such a wonderful place to work. Amazing colleagues, great culture. Now there’s nothing left of that. But I can’t help comparing all other companies to what it was like – and they all fall short in some way.

Adrian’s birthday isn’t until Tuesday, but baking a fancy layer cake is not something you just whip up after work, so we had the cake today instead.

It’s like there is almost no topsoil here. A hand’s breadth’s worth at most. And then it’s the hard-packed, concrete-hard, dead layer that no grass or bush roots penetrate, although cherry tree roots and earthworms manage.

And rocks. So many rocks. When the soil is so densely packed, even the smallest pebble stops the spade dead, because it has no wiggle room.

At this pace I can dig every weekend and still not be done before the ground freezes. Ugh.

Catching the morning sun for some embroidery. Embroidering in sunlight feels a lot nicer than doing it in lamplight in the evening.

“Black, white and one colour” embroidery course. Step two of the first exercise. Cut out shapes from the patterns from the previous steps. Combine them with shapes in black, on an A3 piece of paper. Then frame a smaller (A5-ish) section of it, and that will be the design for an embroidered piece. An additional instruction was to not think about the embroidery aspect, but just play with the shapes and patterns.

This was such a new way for me of approaching embroidery design. Either I just make things up as I go – or I have some idea or concept of direction in mind, and tweak the details. This was in between. I am making a design before embroidering, but with no direction to aim for. Just whatever comes out.

Like yesterday’s pattern-drawing, this was a lot of fun. Playing around with paper and scissors and glue, and producing random things of no particular importance.

Some patterns that I liked in their original shape turned out to be mostly useless for this, because cutting them up would lose the whole thing that made them interesting. I still like them, so I might use them for an embroidery design as they are, at some later time.

“Black, white and one colour” embroidery course. First part of first exercise: make patterns, black on white, using a variety of pens.

I found this very relaxing and enjoyable. Just… make marks. Of whatever kind. Then make different kinds of marks. No expectations, no rules. Like stepping back into being a child and just doodling.

I made a bunch of patterns, and could have made more, if someone hadn’t occupied my stash of paper. I took that as a sign to call it a night.